Let’s look at Levandowski’s AI-based religion, Way of the Future…
AI engineer Anthony Levandowski, who is notoriously at the centre of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has filed the paperwork for a new Artificial Intelligence-based religion, Way of the Future or WOTF for short. This AI religion’s aim is to ‘contribute to the betterment of society’ through ‘understanding and worship of the (AI) Godhead’, according to the proposal. The WOTF is set to consist of Levandowski as a Dean, and a further small council of advisors.
It’s no surprise that in our increasingly secular society, we’re seeing a rise in new religious movements. Over millions of years, our planet and different civilizations on it have worshipped many different gods and deities. Science, discovery and new technologies have influenced religion in the past. So is it really all that far-fetched to think that our digital age should birth an AI god?
Humans VS AI
According to WIRED, Levandowski’s reasoning behind the implementation of an AI godhead is down to transition. He believes that humans rule the planet because they’re smarter than other species on it. So in theory, once we create something smarter than ourselves there would naturally be a transition of power.
Arguably, you can also see the beginnings of an AI allegiance even now in the masses who follow tech giants like Apple and Google ‘religiously’. We put our faith in AI day to day – Alexa, Siri, your SatNav. If Alexa tells you that you need an umbrella that morning, you take it. If your SatNav tells you to take a right, you do.
Technology already knows so much about us. Smart homes operate based on behavioural patterns, recommending purchases and so on. The more data it gathers allows AI to one day become an omniscient being. It will be able to influence our personal belief systems based on masses of data.
An existential threat to humanity?
No stranger to warning of the dangers of AI, Elon Musk has made his feelings on an AI deity obvious. He has also previously stated that such systems are an existential threat to humanity. Referring to the development of superhuman intelligence in AI as ‘summoning the demon’, quite the antithesis of Levandowski’s AI Saviour.
It’s not the first time AI has been thought of in reference to religion. The movement of people known as ‘Singulatarians’ holds the belief that once we reach the singularity (computer intelligence becomes greater than human), we’ll be able to merge our consciousness into the machine and live forever in digital immortality.
Regardless of the likelihood of the singularity happening anytime soon, it’s obvious that if it does, it will initiate a huge power shift between humans and AI.
Or our saviour?
Or, possibly not. Vince Lynch, of IV.AI told Venture Beat of the similarities between AI and the Bible. “Teaching humans about religious education is similar to the way we teach knowledge to machines: repetition of many examples that are versions of a concept you want the machine to learn.” He goes on to explain that “the concept of teaching a machine to learn … and then teaching it to teach … (or write AI) isn’t so different from the concept of a holy trinity or a being achieving enlightenment after many lessons learned with varying levels of success and failure.”
So, with the ability to write its own scripture, we could end up with AI-generated ideologies. We could attract humans to worshipping it as our reliance on AI continues.
There is also a rationale to support that AI could do a better job of looking after the planet than we do. His church plans to offer everything it develops as open-source, as an all-seeing being. It will be capable of unlimited processing power and access all the data in the world; it could make better decisions on what we need to do to survive and implement them on a larger scale.
I’ll admit, I’m on the fence on this one. But I can’t wait to read the first manual on WOTF and what Levandowski has planned for the development of his movement.
